In this podcast, guest Dwight Klappich joins co-hosts Thomas O’Connor and Caroline Chumakov to discuss Predicts 2022: Supply Chain Technology. With things changing so quickly, Gartner is exploring the medium-term future in order to help CSCOs make calculated risks based on our research. Specifically, two predictions are explored during the podcast:

• By 2026, more than 75% of commercial supply chain management applications vendors will deliver embedded advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and data science.
• Through 2025, 25% of supply chain decisions will be made across intelligent edge ecosystems.

Organizations are focused on investing in digital transformation and decision making, evaluating technology that can help them become more agile, adaptive and flexible. This decision making involves embedded intelligence and data science. Those with greater risk tolerance and resources are the earlier adopters. To make the transition from early adopter to mainstream, more packaged solutions need to be available — and vendors are responding.

We discuss how enhanced decision making is a top funding priority for supply chains because quality, speedy decisions are increasingly important. Supply chains are getting more complex and the number of disruptive events is increasing. Supply chains have to be more responsive, which is causing companies to rethink their IT architectures. More decision making is being pushed to the edge, which requires the ability to make rapid decisions in near real time, as close to the point of need as possible. More investment will be needed to build this.